SEO and User Experience (UX)

Focusing on SEO and UX Together Makes Digital Marketing Comprehensive

Google has over 200 factors it uses when determining how to rank a website. Some are more important than others and some are just out of your control. Over the past few years we have developed a winning strategy that narrows down and focuses effort on the Google factors that elicit trust and create new opportunities for customers through increased relevant search traffic. A focus on SEO and UX together mean a more comprehensive digital marketing strategy because you address both people and Google, and Google will reward you for that.

Since the dawn of Google there are a few things that have not changed and no one should expect to change. Google will always:

• reward a site that has great content
• reward a site that has backlinks from a variety of relevant and reputable sources
• reward sites that have a thoughtful and well put together internal linking structure
• reward sites that have semantically formatted content
• reward sites that belong to companies with a trusted and documented history
• reward sites that provide protection to users
• reward sites that load quickly on all devices

Why? Because Good Guy Google appreciates a website that looks out for its users. They rank sites based on what they deem to be trust factors and these trust factors combine to make up the User Experience (UX).

User Experience and SEO Inform Your Local Strategy

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying “Content is King” in relation to inbound marketing. Well, that is only half the story. The other half is “Context is God.” Yes, you need content for any SEO strategy but if that content isn’t relevant and doesn’t speak to your audience, they aren’t going to stay. Getting clicks isn’t the same as getting conversions.

A comprehensive Local SEO Strategy is focused on enriching existing content by adding new and relevant content tying your company to a location. This technique coupled with backlinks, interlinking, and consistently adding new content works regardless of industry, business size or business type.

A Local SEO strategy should include:

• Responsive Website Design
• On Page SEO
• Off Page SEO
• Content Creation
• Content Enrichment
• Social Media Marketing
• Lightning Fast Web Hosting w/ SSL Included

Each item on this list works together to show Google that your website deserves to be trusted because you put the effort into providing a stellar experience for your users.

SEO Best Practices Include Website Design

Building a beautiful website should be a top goal but what a site looks like isn’t a top metric of success. A visual aesthetic is nice but building a great website begins under the hood. The best place to start is with WordPress on WPEngine.com using the Avada theme. This combination helps with SEO because:

• your site won’t be slow
• Your site will have an SSL certificate
• your site will be responsive and if done professionally, optimized for mobile
• your site will have a basic level of on page SEO simply because you used WordPress

Using WordPress also provides you with access to some truly awesome plugins to extend and refine your site, the majority of which are free with a paid upgrade. Getting started, the upgrade that you can’t live without is Yoast SEO. It isn’t very expensive and pays for itself in time savings; particularly in link suggestions and managing redirects.

You can easily and inexpensively build your own website. If you are ready for a professional web designer, contact us today and see how we can help you reach your goals.